CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Thursday, 8:49 p.m.

Fox RiverMedicalCenter

After he received the fax from the Oakland Bureau office, Craig knew the next part was a job for Paige Mitchell and no one else. He found her in the hospital halls. She had been looking for him.

“Paige, you’re the people person, the Protocol Officer,” he said, gripping the curling fax in his hand. “You talk well to strangers. You know how to make people feel at ease even in difficult situations.”

She smiled and crossed her arms over her cream cable-knit sweater. The loose sweater hung long over her hips, complimenting dark brown slacks. “Keep on like that, Craig, and you’re going to make my head swell.”

Craig didn’t joke with her as he held out the list of names and addresses. “I need you to do some calling for me. Time to break the bad news and bring in the cavalry, for what it’s worth.”

Paige squinted down at the names, then looked up at him with her blue eyes. “What is this?”

“Georg Dumenco’s family. Their names were changed, everything kept classified. He wants to see them one last time.”

Paige studied the addresses. “They’re right here in the Midwest,” she said. “And Dumenco kept them secret?”

Craig shook his head. “The U.S. Marshal kept them secret. Dumenco didn’t know where they lived-he’s only seen them once a year since he fled to this country. Dumenco wanted it that way, for their own protection.”

Paige’s eyes widened. “You mean they’ve all been here within a day’s drive of Fermilab, and they never saw him, never got in touch?”

“Only once a year, under U.S. Marshal supervision, on carefully prearranged visits.”

“But putting the family up so close to him and yet blocked away, they must have known everything he was doing. Dumenco was in the paper often enough, at least in the technical journals. His wife could have tracked him down without much trouble.”

“Unless she was afraid. Unless he had told them not to.”

Paige shook her head. “I can’t decide if that was a kindness or a cruelty on Dumenco’s part.”

Craig sighed. “I won’t debate the matter with you, but it’s time for one last kindness. I’ve insisted on it.” He nudged the paper in Paige’s hand. “I want you to get in touch with them and bring them here. Now. Tonight. The FBI will provide the transportation, Code Red.” He looked down the long halls of hospital rooms. “Time for a final family reunion.”

At the nurse’s station several women and one man looked at computer screens, drank coffee, and gossiped with each other. Overhead, Craig saw one of the fluorescent light bulbs flickering, trying to throw out just a few more photons before it finally gave up the ghost… like Dumenco would, sometime soon.

Craig watched Paige’s expression grow serious. She swallowed hard and then nodded. Her eyes were misty. “Of course, Craig, I’ll do it. It’s the least I can do.”

She went immediately over to a pay phone by the waiting room, picked up the receiver, and began dialing.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Friday, 4:47 a.m.

Fermilab

Nicholas Bretti knew that this early in the morning, the Fermilab grad students would be groggy, fueling themselves with stale coffee and paying no attention to anything but the largest disaster, such as the accelerator going down. It was too late for faculty or staff members to be around, and too early for the cleaning crew.

But it was the perfect time to slip in, move around without being hindered. He could retrieve his crystal-lattice trap and head back to O’Hare.

After Dumenco’s clumsy accident had wrecked his previous stash of antimatter, and after the emergency repairs to get the Tevatron up and running again, the accelerator had provided a good beam almost continuously for days. By now, the sophisticated antimatter trap would be filled nearly to capacity with p-bars.

It was more than enough to set him up for the rest of his life, if that bastard Chandrawalia remained true to his word. Bretti didn’t know if he trusted the towelhead after the threats Chandrawalia had made, and after having been deceived all along regarding the intended use for the antiprotons. Why should Bretti keep working with a cretin like that man?

But then what other choice did he have?

Outside, in the pre-dawn darkness, prairie grasses whispered quietly, and the electrical wires hummed overhead. Bright lights shone over the Fermilab site, but few employees or vehicles moved around. The only people here would be Director Nels Piter’s paid slaves, working away on someone else’s experiment. Bretti thought it was just a bunch of wasted time, as Dr. Piter was good at meetings, good at presentations, good at politicking… only his science was old hat, not cutting edge anymore.

Signs on fenceposts announced the coming weekend’s “Prairie Harvest” community activity, when Fermilab volunteers and their families would go across the grasslands, plucking seeds from weeds so they could scatter them again the next spring in an effort to restore the long-lost primordial tallgrass prairie. After the weekend’s activities, the fire marshal would direct controlled burns to raze some of the grass. For now, the captive herd of domesticated buffalo stood around placidly, dim shadows in the night.

Bretti still had a small crystal-lattice trap rigged in the beam-sampling substation where he had shot the FBI agent, but the main treasure was the larger trap down in the experimental target area. He hoped he could retrieve both, to increase his reward. Now that he knew the Indians planned to use the p-bars for weapons work, maybe Bretti could get them to up the price.

He scowled. Fat chance! For all he knew, they would take the antimatter and throw him to the wolves. He had to make sure he was paid up front, before he finally delivered the merchandise.

Snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray, Bretti pulled his dark blue rental car into the shadows next to the concrete building, glad he had turned down Chandrawalia’s offer to get his own car back. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. He could slip in and out, and be gone forever. Bretti shivered and pulled his jacket around him.

To the south, in the broad, cleared area of mangled earth, the construction machinery for the Main Injector sat like silent behemoths, ready for another day of hard work. Big plans, big new projects-Bretti thought of the weapons work the Indians were conducting with their huge capacitor banks and physics machinery at Bangalore. They would never be able to compete with Fermilab.

He used his key to gain access through the side entrance into the experimental target areas, where a quick walk brought him to a series of doors and chain-link gates. After opening two other locks with slightly different combinations, he was down the hall from the main accelerator control. Warning lights glowed red, cautioning that the Tevatron beam was up and running, but nobody would be down here in the target areas. Dumenco’s accident would have done a good job of spooking all of them.

The floors were tiled with an orange and blue checkerboard of linoleum, worn but still garish; the ceilings hung with suspended acoustic tiles, water-stained in places from leaky plumbing. The piping on the walls was painted a deep blue.

Years ago, the halls would have been filled around the clock with students and staff alike, everyone eagerly anticipating the latest results of an accelerator run. Grad students would pull large photographic plates that had been exposed in a bubble chamber, and then they would painstakingly measure each swirl, each line and corkscrew of high-energy charged particles, shrapnel from nuclear collisions spiraling in magnetic fields.